


Love doesn’t always play out perfectly like it does in your nightly television dramas

by brioche



Category: Gintama
Genre: F/M, happy birthday okita, ive had this laying around for 4 months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brioche/pseuds/brioche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Fighting against her makes his heartbeat race, but fighting beside her makes it beat twice as fast.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Love doesn’t always play out perfectly like it does in your nightly television dramas

The day that Okita Sougo is ferried back to the Shinsengumi headquarters on a stretcher with approximately seven broken bones, four chipped teeth, two black eyes, and one and half liters of blood lost at the scene of the battle is the same day that he decides that the China girl is the only one for him.

The other officers gather around him in shock and ask who could have done so much damage to him, the prodigy swordsman, their invincible Captain. He doesn’t answer. This is between the two of them. This is _personal_ , and he won’t let any of them touch her.

Her Yato blood will allow her to recover much faster from the cuts and bruises he left her with compared to the wounds she gifted him. It is upsetting that after persevering through the struggle marking the fierce girl with slashes from his blade, the uncountable scars covering her skin that designate her as _his_ will disappear so quickly.

He will just have to find Kagura every time his tokens of affection fade away to graciously deliver her another serving of _love_ that only he can provide.

 

\---

 

Sometimes their scuffles are initiated with an exchange of verbal insults that quickly cause any uncomfortable passersby to abscond from their usual battleground in the park, but other times Okita merely greets Kagura with his katana pressed against her neck and a serene, twisted smile. She responds kindly with a swift punch to his face which may or may not shatter his nose depending on both the effectiveness of his provocations and his reflexes on the current day.

He yanks at her hair by the fistful and spits in her face. He kicks her when she’s down and takes pride in the bloody stains that bloom across the fabric of her _cheongsam_ when his blade successfully connects with her flesh. He calls her names that his sister would be ashamed to hear, and as she gets more agitated he licks his lips slowly while anticipating the upcoming blow.

She doesn’t hesitate to knee him in the groin, to jab her sharp nails at his eyes, or to bite him with her sharp little canine teeth until she punctures his skin. She sends him flying into the lake with a swing of her umbrella and across the park with a wild punch to the gut. She grins and sniggers each time a loud crack signals an increment in the sum of his total fractured bones, and he is sure that she is the only one fit to be his queen. Together they can rule the planet of sadists and transform it into an intergalactic empire with trillions of sniveling peons serving their every whim.

Sometimes their fights end with him victorious, pouring the strength from every cell of his body into keeping the thrashing girl beneath him trapped against the ground despite each kick she slams against his ribcage containing the strength of about five stampeding wildebeests. On days when the China girl is feeling especially upset with the feeling of his hands pinning her down and the sight of the satisfied smirk on his lips she unleashes the entire zoo upon him. In spite of being swatted away with the ease of a lioness dismissing her cub and him becoming the one on the ground with her hands encircled around his throat with the immovable grip of a crocodile’s jaws, he still tallies these days as his win because he’s succeeded at forcing her to (almost) use her full strength. (He knows no one else in Edo can. Someday he’ll make her go all out.)

More often than not their fights end perhaps with his body being flung against a tree with enough force to uproot it, or maybe with him sprawled on the ground dazed with two halves of a newly broken park bench shattered at his sides, but always in this case with her sneering at him triumphantly with that cocky grin that he hates (or loves?) to see before his vision fades to black.

Kagura is a monster, but he is, too.

 

\---

 

Sometimes Okita tries to show his fondness for the China girl in new ways.

What motivates him to try an alternative method of courtship is the sight of some scrawny kid handing Kagura a heart-shaped box of chocolates adorned with a bow that makes Okita want to hurl. In fact, he walks up to the brat with his hands shoved nonchalantly in his pockets and does just that all over the box and the damn boy’s face. Needless to say, he doubts he’ll have any further competition after that display.

It’s a surprise when Kondo tells him, mouth hanging open aghast, that adding a tablespoon of arsenic and a splash of mercury into the cake he is baking her is, in fact, _not_ the proper course of action to take (it’s okay, he was just kidding, kind of), and he settles for replacing the cup of sugar with a cup of salt instead. Before Hijikata can suggest a cup of mayonnaise as the superior substitution he delivers his heartfelt present, and after Kagura displays her weakness for food and scarfs the entire dessert down in one bite she repays his efforts by popping out both of his knees while gagging and choking with tears streaming down her face.

He observes from his very reliable nightly television dramas that girls like receiving flowers, and during one rainy afternoon while Okita should be out on patrol he buys a couple from the nearest flower shop, making sure to tell the clerk to charge the bill to Hijikata’s bank account. The bouquet he receives is hardly what he had in mind, and after discarding the collection of perfectly trimmed roses that are only worth the small dent he’s made into Hijikata’s worthless savings he scrounges through the park (their park) for his own array of flowers. When he shows up at Yorozuya Gin-chan and presents her with his offering – a mess of thorn ridden stems topped off with a few stray wilting petals – she slaps them against his forehead in response, leaving red scratches on his skin before she kicks his shin, calls him a jackass, and slams the door in his face. (He’s in love.)

After an incredibly slow day at work involving the arrest of a meager jewelry thief stealing a necklace for his girlfriend, Okita is stuck by inspiration. The China girl is always too busy stuffing her face or trying to find food in order to stuff her face to care about anything ridiculous like her _appearance_ , but he figures even a vicious brute like her could appreciate a nice necklace. He doesn’t even need to bother buying one as he already has an impressive collection of _necklaces_ , but when he sneaks up on her and snaps a collar around her neck he doesn’t even have time to tell her to tug on its chain while telling her to sit or stay before she’s locked her arms around him with a scream and sent his head crashing down to the ground with a piledriver.

He gives her a teddy bear with a grenade stuffed inside its head and some homemade perfume in a tin can that he likes to call _eau de dog shit_ and waits outside of Yorozuya Gin-chan to greet her in the morning with a bowl of rice (her favorite food other than that nasty _sukonbu_ ) shot at her groggy face from his bazooka.

None of these offerings seem to go over very well.

He guesses Kagura isn’t a girl who likes normal presents.

 

\---

 

The calmest moments in their unbridled hurricane of a relationship surface after their more violent battles as the so-called genius swordsman of the Shinsengumi and the incredibly unladylike Yato girl lay on the ground surrounded by the destruction they’ve wreaked.

_Is that all you’ve got, China?_ Okita asks mockingly even though he’s secretly glad it’s over but still doesn’t dare to confess that he couldn’t take any more. _How pathetic. You’re worse than last time, must be getting fat from all that nasty food you shove down your throat._

_Shut up, Sadist!_ Kagura bellows, displaying her impressive lung capacity as the nearby trees tremble from her roar’s sound waves, and he feels the ground shaking beneath him while she thrashes around like a beluga whale stranded on the beach. _Gin-san once told me that he who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious and I’m done with you cause dinner is soon and I don’t wanna be too tired to eat so I win, yup!_

He doesn’t waste the effort to tell her that the particular quote she has parroted isn’t a Gintoki original or that her logic is flawed, and after a few more exchanges of _fat pig_ and _twisted brat_ and _bitch_ and _shit-eating ass-face_ they fall silent save for their synchronous breathing.

They’re more similar than he would like to admit. On the occasion that he can bring her to counter his assault with a fraction of the Yato blood within her, he is reminded of himself by the murderous gleam of her eyes, beady and blue as the sky right before the worst storm of the century. She has no problem rebounding his insults with not only double the vulgarity but also double the volume until he feels like his eardrums are about to burst. They possess the same cutthroat determination to best the other but know the exact limit of their rival and refrain from crossing over it, as actually _killing_ each other would defeat the purpose of finally having a worthy opponent to fight.

They are both ruthless and powerful beyond their years, but after all this time destroying not only the city but also each other the fact remains that he will always be more skillful and cunning with his carefully calculated attacks while she relies on her brute strength and speed much over ten times his own. She has no qualms with playing dirty, but he escalates the concept of a low blow to an entirely new realm. He goes all out on her every time he confronts her (he has to, or he wouldn’t stand a chance), but she always holds back (she’s too damn nice) until his sharp words push her to erupt.

She skips around the city with a bounce in her step and a grin on her face as she greets everyone who says hello to her with an enthusiastic wave. (Everyone except him.) She believes anything and everything that anyone (that Gintoki) tells her, and what matters to her most during every second of every day is what she will be eating during her next meal. She’s cocky and she thinks she’s the queen of the universe and her arrogant chortle sounds like the cacophony of a dozen dying bats as they’re being roasted to death.

He hides his insecurities and faults behind his deadpan snark and trademark sadism. One of the few acts he puts a conscious effort into is making the lives (the life) of the people (the person) he hates as miserable as possible, and if anyone ever tells him to do something that he doesn’t want to he doesn’t hesitate to take their suggestion and shove it up their ass. He’s participated in things that should never be spoken of and witnessed things that never should have been seen. He knows the world is a messed up place of messed up people and places his full, utmost trust in no one but himself lest he end up buried underground in a coffin for making the mistake of doing otherwise.

As they lay there side by side he listens to her calm breathing. Maybe she fell asleep in her boredom, but instead of teaching her the valuable lesson of never falling asleep around the enemy he’s too busy thinking about how Hijikata will be upset when he returns to headquarters needing a replacement jacket for the fifth time this week since Kagura turned the one he’s wearing right now into swiss cheese (again) with her bullets.

He’s glad he met her. He’d never confess this to her face.

 

\---

 

For once, they have an almost civil encounter in the park.

Maybe it’s because there are no more benches left for Kagura to throw at him but more likely because Okita is still secretly wishing for their relationship status to grow from rivals into rival-significant-others or something like that so he tones himself down.

He bites his tongue and the urge to call her a _stupid glutton_ after she demonstrates one of the new colorful insults Gintoki’s no doubt added to her already uncouth vocabulary by calling him a _super sadistic fuckwad_. She seems surprised that he doesn’t retaliate, and after she eggs him on with an arrogant, albeit lopsided grin he only tugs at a fistful of her hair for two seconds rather than five before he fishes her daily ration of _sukonbu_ from her pockets much to her chagrin and tosses the red packages into the lake while she screams about sexual harassment and abuse. (Too bad no one’s coming to save her because he _is_ the police.

Their meeting ends with her holding him at gunpoint as he begrudgingly purchases her a new box of replacement _sukonbu_. When she snatches it out of his hands and parts ways with him after launching a token, obligatory punch to the face that he dodges easily, he realizes that in a strangely roundabout way she has finally accepted a gift from him, even if she forced him to buy her said _gift_.

It seems like there are ways for him to feel victorious after seeing her without having to beat her face in.

When Yamazaki asks upon Okita’s return to headquarters what he was up to he responds with a straight face that he was on a date. He’s not sure why his words make his fellow Shinsengumi officer spew out his cup of tea, but he leaves quickly and silently as Yamazaki gags on the floor, crying out to the wrong person for help. (Yamazaki should know better than to ask the _sadist_ for assistance when he’s in pain.)

 

\---

 

Okita thinks that it’s incredibly rude when some Jouishishi guy interrupts him by lobbing a grenade at him while he’s in the middle of holding Kagura in a headlock. Hijikata told him it would be best for him to internalize the names of the different Joui factions, but learning dozens of those rebel groups’ names would take up time that could be better used sleeping, crafting more plans to steal the Vice-Commander position, or _getting to know_ (bothering) Kagura – like he was a moment ago before some damn bastard intruded.

The duo exchanges knowing but silent stares for a second before he releases her. She kicks the grenade back at his assailant with double the force that shooting it from his bazooka would have unleashed. When the grenade explodes upon contact with the man’s face, Okita is glad that the girl cackling next to him with her hands planted proudly on her hips is actually on his side but disappointed (offended) that it seems like only one person is out for his head today. He wishes that he could have been the one to finish him off, but as the man’s body topples back to the ground his companions reveal themselves from the dark alleyways. The sight makes him smile.

He tells her to get out of there because a glutton like her is only going to be dead weight (because there’s actually a lot of people surrounding them and the only one he’s ever going to allow to beat her is _him_ ) and she responds by accidentally smacking the back of his head with her umbrella as she takes five guys out with a splatter of bullets.

He slashes and slices his katana with the expert control and precision that only an experienced killer could possess while she delivers punches and kicks strong enough to topple buildings and knock the breath out of a whale. Their one-sided annihilation of the enemy is effortless and systematic. They act as a single entity, always knowing what the other is thinking with no need for words. The prince of sadists and Yato girl are scary enough on their own, let alone when they’ve combined their strength. Their opponents fall faster than Kagura can down a bowl of rice, and they aren’t even using their full power.

When the remaining Jouishishi start to retreat back after realizing that their attack is futile Okita calmly wipes the blood from his blade. _Hogging all the finishing blows for yourself, China?_ he asks with a roll of his eyes. _Rude._ She responds by resting her umbrella on her shoulder while sticking her tongue out at him tauntingly. (It’s kind of cute, both her face and the men shrieking for mercy as they run away.)

He apologizes for not being able to continue throttling her neck because he has to drag the Jouishishi who are still breathing to the police station, and she says he’d better make it up to her tomorrow by letting her stomp on his face.

He hears Kagura humming to herself as she skips off with a smile, and he dials Hijikata’s number to request a squad car. Fighting against her makes his heartbeat race, but fighting beside her makes it beat twice as fast.

 

\---

 

When they happen to cross roads in the middle of the street one day (it’s not like he planned on  it) the surrounding crowd is instantly cleared when Okita draws his katana. He wastes no time leaping forward at her, swinging his sword wildly. She taunts and sneers at him and his poorly aimed attacks but he says nothing, only letting up on his assault once they near the street corner. When Kagura launches a kick at his head with a haughty snicker he drops his blade to lock his hands around her ankle instead, swinging her around a few times while she screams and threatens to barf at him before he throws her at the nearby restaurant. Her body knocks the front door down, and after he calmly sheathes his katana he walks in after her (steps over her) and threatens the wide–eyed waiter to give him a table for two _or else_.

After Kagura clears the debris off of herself and they’re seated at a table, he says that if she orders anything over 300 yen she has to pay for herself because he doesn’t want to have to arrest her for robbing a police officer of all the money he possesses. She says she couldn’t even buy a bowl of plain white rice with 300 yen and she doesn’t want to anyways since she’s sure that he’s so poor right now because he already spent all his money bribing the restaurant owner to put poison in her food.

She ends up ordering five bowls of _tamagodon_ , two dozen croquettes, enough teriyaki pork chops to reconstruct a whole pig, a pot of miso soup, and three bowls of rice pudding for dessert. Just hearing her list everything to the waiter as her eyes gleam and the drool drips down her cheek makes him lose his appetite, and he just orders a glass of _sake_.

He doesn’t want to hear her questioning why he didn’t order anything to eat or if he’s on a diet because he suddenly realized how ugly his face is or if he needs her to pay for him too because he’s so pitiful, so he quickly counters by dropping the bombshell of _you’re not_ worried _about me, are you, China_? She pouts and looks away with a huff. (He’s glad that she didn’t deny it.)

While waiting for their food they only have a heated swordfight with their utensils once and stop kicking each other underneath the table about five minutes after they started. He thinks that the sight of her food arriving makes her not only forget that he’s sitting across from her but also that he exists at all, but when she offers him a small portion of her meal by silently hurling a croquette at his eye any hurt feelings that surfaced in him before disappear instantly.

By the time she’s done eating her stomach has ballooned to five times its normal size and the weight of it drags her entire body off of her chair and down to the floor. As she moans in agony he prods at her bulging midsection with the tip of his scabbard to accentuate her pain. _Are you about to give birth to a cow, China?_ he asks with a sneer while fishing out his wallet. _I’ll slice you open to make the delivery easier if you climb to your knees, kiss my feet, and grovel._

She screams and calls him an asshole and tries to kick him, but her every action is made languid resulting from her transition from the stage of elation to that of digestion. He dodges her effortlessly, offering her a kick of his own in retaliation, and after Okita leaves enough money on the table to pay for both of them he leaves Kagura there flailing on the ground for Gintoki and Shinpachi to pick up later.

 

\---

 

Okita isn’t particularly pleased that after ninety-nine battles he’s only claimed victory thirty-eight times (he remembers each of his defeats in detail, down to the magnitude of pain he suffered from the finishing blow), but regardless of his wounded pride he decides to commemorate their hundredth brawl with something different.

After Okita manages to tackle Kagura to the ground and restrain her enough to inch his face towards hers, the moment their mouths awkwardly touch she growls and closes her front teeth around his upper lip. Seconds after she bites him hard enough to make him bleed she slams her forehead against his, and while his head spins and his grip on her loosens she knocks him off of her with a monstrous kick.

The next thing he knows she pries his eyelid open with her fingers and licks the side of his eye with the tip of her tongue. An uncharacteristically confused splutter chokes him as he punches her face and asks what the hell she’s doing.

_If you’re gonna come out of nowhere and try to eat me, I’m gonna eat you first, you bastard!_ she threatens with a glare as she shakes him angrily by his collar. _I don’t care how bad you taste, I’m not gonna lose to you!_

_It’s a goddamned_ kiss _, nitwit_ , he snaps and a moment later his head smacks back down to the ground when she drops him in shock.

He can call her the nastiest names and ram his sword through her flesh and she won’t even flinch, but this one sentence is all it takes to make her eyes wide as Jupiter as she blubbers and stammers and tries to hide everything by slurring her shocked sounds into a laugh even though he damn well _heard her_. _H-Ha ha! Ha!_ she exclaims as she turns her head to the side and covers her mouth with the back of her hand. He sits up and rubs the back of his head while he watches her eyebrows twitching uncontrollably and wonders just how long she’s planning on chortling. _Duh! Wh-What else would it be, huh? You think I’m stupid? I knew that, you bastard!_

She’s blabbering, calling him dumb for looking down on her, but he stopped listening a while ago. He wraps his fingers around her wrist and yanks her hand away from her mouth before he leans in to kiss her again. He tastes the familiar flavor of his own blood on her lips along with whatever she ate for breakfast this morning, and when neither of these is enough to unnerve him he considers that he’s probably been spending too much time with the China girl.

Like everything else they do together, their kissing quickly turns into a competition for dominance, and when he pins her down with a satisfied grin she complains during the brief moment that he breaks away that the sunlight is making her weak. (He knows her face is tinted pink for an entirely different reason.) She is incredibly aggressive despite being trapped beneath him and kisses him sore, relying too much on her teeth and pressing her lips against his so hard that he thinks she’s trying to grind them away. Her technique needs work, but like her fighting skill it’s only something she can gain with further _experience_. (He’ll be happy to engage her further as usual.)

Okita Sougo returns to the Shinsengumi headquarters with two broken ribs, a bruise on his forehead, his tongue in pain, and blood still dripping from his lip. None of the other officers question his lightly battered appearance. Hijikata puffs on his cigarette and scribbles at his paperwork as he asks how the date went.

Okita says it’s complicated.


End file.
